Iceland parliamentary election

[politicus]

At 17,1% counted the seat distribution is:

IP 19
PP 17
SDA 9
LG 9
BF 5
Pirates 4

So there is no centrist PP-SDA-BF majority. I hope this changes.

Surprisingly IP doesnt need levelling seats, while PP does. This is contrary to what everyone had expected.

Well at 31% the pirates are out, so the centrist majority is back, but IP just needs one more to block the constitution.

IP 21
PP 18
SDA 10
LG 8
BF 6

[politicus]

Result at 80,6%

IP 26,3      20 (18+2)
PP 24,5     19 (19+0)
SDA 12,9   10  (8+2)
LG 11,3      8  (6+2)
BF 8,4         6  (3+3)
Pirates 5,1  0

Households Party 3,1
Dawn  3,0
Democracy Watch 2,5
Right Greens 1,7
Rainbow 1,1

Humanists 0,1
People Front of Iceland 0,1
Rural Party 0,1
Sturla Jonsson 0,1

Its the first time since 1931 that the two major Icelandic left wing parties get below 25% combined.

[politicus]

I think this result  dooms the constitution bill. IP only need 3 extra votes to block it, and there will always be a couple of PP right wingers or fishing lobby stooges willing to join them, even if SDG is willing to compromise with the left.

[politicus]

Result at 95,0%

IP 26,7      19 (18+1)
PP 24,3     19 (19+0)
SDA 12,9    9  (8+1)
LG 10,9       7 (6+1)
BF 8,4         6  (3+3)
Pirates 5,1  3  (0+3)

[politicus]

Okay, thats isolated West Fiord Areas missing, this might take some time.

[politicus]

Result at 97,7%

IP 26,7      19 (18+1)
PP 24,4     19 (19+0)
SDA 12,9    9  (8+1)
LG 10,9       7 (6+1)
BF 8,2         6  (3+3)
Pirates 5,1  3  (0+3)

[politicus]

Final result

IP 26,7      19 (18+1)
PP 24,4     19 (19+0)
SDA 12,9    9  (8+1)
LG 10,9       7 (6+1)
BF 8,2         6  (3+3)
Pirates 5,1  3  (0+3)
Dawn 3,1
Households Party 3,0
Democracy Watch 2,5
Right Green 1,7
Rainbow 1,1
Rural Party 0,2
Peoples Front of Iceland 0,1
Humanists 0,1
Sturla Jonsson 0,1

Blanks 2,2

Thats more than 4.000 voting blank - likely to protest against the state of Icelandic politics, only 10% say they trust the politicians in polls.

[politicus]

Guess one can call this a "thumpin'"...

Yeah, SDA lost 56.7% of its 2009 following and LG lost 49.8% of their support from last time. For comparison IP only lost 35.2% of their 2007 support in 2009.

Politics aint fair, but then we already knew that

[politicus]

This result should make SDG the new prime minister, he has got an equal number of seats to IP and he is "the man in the middle" and can chose a centrist government if he wants to. IPs bargaining position is too weak to claim it despite getting the most votes.

If any of you guys have some spare time it would be interesting to see how the seats would have been distributed under the constitution bill rules = Iceland as one constituency and no threshold, so 1/63 gives you a seat.

Its interesting what changed the trend. It looked like the Left was gaining and IP/PP was down at 48-49 + both according to DVs readers and observers Katrin Jakobsdottir and Arnason were good in the debates, while Benediktsson was pretty bad. SDG was also good in the debates, but I would still have expected IP to go down a bit. But maybe the expectations to Benediktsson are just so low, so he didnt dissapoint anybody...

Still its hard to tell, because we didnt get a second half of the week poll. Maybe the Lefts moment was already halting before the debates and then didnt pick up.

[politicus]

This result should make SDG the new prime minister, he has got an equal number of seats to IP and he is "the man in the middle" and can chose a centrist government if he wants to. IPs bargaining position is too weak to claim it despite getting the most votes.

If any of you guys have some spare time it would be interesting to see how the seats would have been distributed under the constitution bill rules = Iceland as one constituency and no threshold, so 1/63 gives you a seat.

D'Hondt?

IP 18
PP 16
SDA 8
LG 7
BF 5
Pirates 3
Dawn 2
Households 2
DW 1
Right Greens 1

One seat for every completed 2803 votes.

Thx. I was too lazy to do it. Guess it doesnt change the balance that much, its just more spread out. Still its obvious why PP doesnt like it.

Right wing: RG + IP = 19 - same as IRL

Centrists: PP + Households + BF + DW = 24 - 25 IRL

Left: SDA + LG + Pirates + Dawn = 20 - 19 IRL

[politicus]

No less than 27 new MP, same as in 2009. 12 of them from PP, 4 BF, 2 Pirates.

Jóhanna María Sigmundsdóttir (20), chairwoman of Young Farmers and PPer is the youngest MP ever.
 

Only 25 women, down from 27.

Participation rates were a bit lower in Reykjavik than in the country areas, which is part of the explanation why SDA fared so badly. Its usually higher in Reykjavik, especially with bad wather as this time.

NW 83,6 percent
NE 83,4 percent
SW 82,4 percent
South 81,8 percent

Reykjavík North 78,9 percent
Reykjavík South 80,1 percent

.

[politicus]

Looking at the parties best areas:

PP

NW     35,2
NE      34,6
South 34,5

SW 21,5
Reykjavik N. 16,8
Reykjavik S. 16,4

As expected a strong rural/urban difference, but actually pretty good in the suburbs and decent in Reykjavik.

LG

NE                15,8
Reykjavik N. 15,7
Reykjavik S. 12,1

NE     8,5 #
SW    7,9
South 5,9

# Rainbow got 4,5% in the NW compard to 1,1% nationally because of the native son effect, since its founder hardcore eurosceptic and former Minister for Fishing and Agriculture Jon Bjarnason is from the area. Had he stayed in LG he would have gotten one of the 8 constituency seats with 13% to the two partys combined.

There is a clear difference between uber-rural, conservative Southern Iceland and the strong leftist tradition of the fishing ports of Northern Iceland combined with students from the University of Akureyri (in NE) making NE their best area. Otherwise LG is strong in Reykjavik and weak in suburbia/exurbia where leftist values are not in vogue.

The four other major parties are less interesting, so Ill do them later.

[politicus]

SDA

Reykjavik N. 14,3
Reykjavik S. 14,2
SW 13,6

NW 12,2
NE 10,6
S 10,2

SDA is basically an urban party, but its distribution is more even than normally because BF "stole" so many of their voters in Greater Reykjavik

Weakest in the South for the same reasons as LG. NE is sligthly worse than NW because Left Greens get a higher share of the leftist vote in the NE.

BF

Reykjavik S. 10,7
Reykjavik N. 10,2
SW 9,2

NE 6,5
NW 4,6
S 4,5

BF is a party of townies nicking well-educated former SDA voters in inner Reykjavik and a little less succesfull in the surrounding areas. The Peoples Party, a citizens party in Akureyri, is one of their allies and it gets them a decent showing in the NE. Not much support in the fishing ports and countryside.

Pirates

Reykjavik N. 6,9
Reykjavik S. 6,2
SW 5,0

S 4,7
NW 3,1
NE 3,0

Party for students and the well educated urban elite in Reykjavik with much weaker support in the rural areas and small towns in the north. Its relatively strong support in the South is due to local hero effect.

[politicus]

IP

SW 30,7
S 28,3
Reykjavik S. 26,8

NW 24,7
Reykjavik N. 23,4
NE 22,6

IP is the "national party" with a very broad and heterogenous voter coalition, so its more difficult to explain the differences. But its strongest among middle class voters in suburbia and the conservative country areas and small towns in the South with Vestmanna Islands being a particular stronghold. 

Reykjavik S. being better than N. could be because they have moved middle class areas to the South this year (they change the border before each election to make them equal in size), since Southern Reykjavik is generally more working class than the north, but IP has historically a significant working class support in Reykjavik, so its hard to say.

IP is a little weaker in the north where there are fewer centre-right voters and they are more likey to vote PP due to the coop/egalitarian tradition of the rural north. Fishermen who own their own boat is the IP core up there.

[politicus]

The Pirate Party did have one incumbent.

Yes, Birgitta Jonsdottir, their founder.

Not sure why you posted that?

[politicus]

How much would people say that the Independence Party has in common with Fianna Fáil?

A great deal, but there is also some differences.

Pro
- Its nationalist and has its roots in a national liberation struggle
- Conservative, but in a broad tent way
- Build on patron/client networks
- Fairly corrupt
- Sees itself as the national party of its homeland contrary to other "special interest"/class parties

Con
- Eurosceptic
- Mainly urban
- Has Libertarian elements

[politicus]

PPs social base is close to the FF core and their agrarian populism would fit well in FF. But the traditional position of FF in Irish politics as the big "national party" is much closer to the role of IP in Iceland. And PPs adherence to Social Liberalism in the tradition of Scandinavian peasant parties is quite different from FF.  

Ireland and Iceland are both formerly oppressed island nations with a strong sense of nationalism, a dominant centre-right and established churches haunted by sex scandals, but apart from the obvious dissimilarity in size there are also some pretty clear differences between the two countries, among them the concept of "urban" and the dominance of the capital. In Iceland people in large fishing ports identify as urban vs. the countryside around them and this made some types of people who would have identified as rurals in Ireland join Reykjavik against the farmers in PP.
The sheer size of Reykjavik means that a rural/small town based party could never become the dominant political force in Iceland as FF did in Ireland.

Also Icelands left is different - and stronger - than Irelands with a Left Socialist party being bigger than their SDs in most of the postwar era and keeping SD to the left for fear of losing support if they drifted towards the center, while Irish Labour is more of a Social Liberal party than a genuine leftist party. This left Social Liberalism as a vacant position for PP to use for catching urban voters leaving IP as the only "pure" right wing party. A four party system generates a different dynamic than a three party system.

[politicus]

Fail.

[politicus]

Fail.

That's my comment of the election results.

Okay, I assume you think it was the voters that failed, but you could also say that the SDA failed in many ways despite their success in stabilizing the economy, and SDs are rarely rewarded solely for being good and prudent managers of the economy.

They promised a new Iceland, putting hundred ships in the water were most of them sunk. Their worst mistake was wasting an enormous amount of time and energy trying to get Iceland to join the EU (in a record 18 months, no less..), while every sane observer of Icelandic society and the attitudes of ordinary folks knew this was never going to get a majority, even if the EU hadnt been against Iceland in the Icesave twist and the "macrill war" with EU-fishermen.

If SDA had focused solely on economic stabilization and getting a new and more democratic constitution implemented, they probably would have won despite the austerity measures.

Now they are left with bitter fights over what went wrong and who to blame.

[politicus]

This election raises the question what kind of party system is likely to develop in Iceland in the future.

No less than 15 parties participated in the election and only six of them managed to get any seats.

Four of the parties got almost zero support and are therefore irrelevant. Small left wing fringe groups like the Peoples Front of Iceland will continue to exist, but they are going nowhere.

The parties that originated in the Constitution Council - Dawn and Democracy Watch - are already fighting bitter feuds over whose fault it was, that they didn't get into the Althing. Most of the people mobilized in those movements had no experience with politics before and they are likely to disappear back into anonymity again. Whether the constitution will get through in a watered down version or – more likely – the status quo will remain, I think the citizens movement as a political factor is dead. Its time has simply past and the frantic energy unleashed in 2008/09 has gone.

The only effect Rainbow had was causing LG to lose an otherwise 100% safe constituency seat in the NW, and I think the party will be closed now that LG is back in opposition. There is simply no point in having a small europhobic left wing party in opposition to a bigger eurosceptic left wing party with otherwise almost identical policies!

The Households Party as a protest movement of homeowners will also die off, but its core of disgruntled IP moderaters and centrists is a group that could potentially form the basis for a new party.

Like the Liberals last time the Right Greens had their shot, but failed miserably and will be dissolved. Next time we will likely see yet another party trying to copy the Norwegian PP formula: Low taxes, populism and xenophobia. But Icelands tax-level is lower than mainland Scandinavia and IP already has a low tax message + they lack the Muslim immigrants to create Islamophobia. Their Eastern Europeans and Filipinos are too easy to integrate to create enough tension for an anti-immigration message. All the other Nordic countries have strong right wing populist parties, but I think the lack of Muslims and the lower tax level will make it hard for them to be successful in Iceland. Faux environmentalism clearly didn't do the trick.

The Pirates will probably be largely irrelevant in the new Althing and I doubt they can make the 5% threshold next time, their basis is simply too small. They got in because young leftists were disappointed with LGs participation in implementing the austerity policies and were looking for an alternative, but this element will be missing in 2017.

This leaves Iceland with a 5 party system, that I think could be pretty stable.

Left:

LG: Socialist, urban/rural mix and eurosceptic

SDA: Socialdemocratic, urban and europhile


Liberals:

PP: Rural, pro-development, eurosceptic

BF: Urban, green, europhile

BF clearly fills a void in the political landscape and has a clear edge towards PP, so I think they are here to stay.


Conservatives:

IP will remain a very strong party, but the question is if the moderate europhiles will leave and form their own party. So far they have stayed because they hope to take over the party with its extremely strong political brand, but this looks hopeless and maybe the people around ex prime minister Thorstein Pallsson will realize this after HBK takes over the party, which will happen sooner or later.
At least this is where the open sloth is in Icelandic politics.
So it could develop into a six party system with conservatives also divided along the EU-cleavage.

IP: Urban/rural mix, conservative, eurosceptic

”IP light”: Suburban/urban, moderate, europhile

[politicus]

Well, with this result, it's just "back to normal" for Iceland. No surprise, when you look at the structure of this country: An isolated island with only 300,000 inhabitants, most of whom know and/or are related to each other, with an agricultural tradition (in this case fishing), but still fairly rich - in short: Every Conservative's biggest dream.

It's a miracle that leftist parties even exist on this island.

It was far from back to normal.

Two new parties in parliament and a massive victory to a Liberal party turned populist and promising to take on the international financial establishment with a daring blackmail manouvre. Combine that with the historically dominant IP getting their seond worst election in history + SDA & LG getting the worst combined result for the two major leftist parties since 1931. Thats hardly normal.

Iceland may be isolated historically, but modern Iceland is very globalized. Almost the entire educated elite has studied abroad, many in the US and Britain, and they travel and work overseas more than most nations. Its isolated in the same way NZ is isolated, only with cheaper airfares and shorter travel time to the outside world.

Fishing is not agriculture. Its a very capitalist business that creates sharp divides between the owners of the big trawlers and the fishermen having to do hard and dangerous work in the North Atlantic, and fish processing factories are tiresome and menial work. So you get a strong working class identity and therefore also a solid leftist tradition, which you can see reflected in the difference between the rural South and the NE and NW constituencies even in this election.

[politicus]

Status after all the party leaders visited President Grimsson yesterday:

- IP recommends an IP + PP government (no surprise there)
- Pirates don't want to join a government
- No one else has declined to govern or said which combinations they prefer (at least not officially)

- LG, SDA, PP and BF recommends that SDG gets to be the investigator with the right to seek out government possibilities, Benediktsson recommended himself as the leader of the biggest party.

Grimsson has stated that he wants a government with broad support in the population, hinting that he doesn't like PP + IP with only a little over 50% support among voters.

SDG has said that their plan for lowering household debt is non-negotiable, and this is going to be the big hurdle since none of the other party's like it. The second hurdle is who is going to be Prime Minister. Benediktsson is toast if he doesn't get it, since all IP leaders before him have been PMs, but its not likely that SDG will accept this. A halfway shift after two years is possible, but given that SDG has other options he may not accept this.

The interesting thing now is if the left will cave in more than Benediktsson is willing to do. At least SDG will be 100% certain to be PM if he goes left.

Arnason has refused to step down as SDA leader after fierce internal criticism for not delivering on any of the party's three big election promises from 2009: Finishing the EU negotiations, a new, just fishing quota system and a new constitution. He is also getting a lot of flack for not using Johanna Sigurdardottir in the campaign - which probably also was a mistake, thousands of people came to bid her farewell and covered the square before her office in red roses, so she is still highly popular.
He may be tempted to join a PP led government to silence his critics, even if the prize is going to be very high.
 

[politicus]

Grimsson has made SDG the investigator, as expected. SDG has decided to talk to all the parties  instead of focusing on IP.

A small disclaimer to my prediction about the new party structure. Dawn and the Households Party got over 2,5% of the votes, so they qualify for public party financing. Its not big money, around 150.000 US dollars over 4 years, but it increases the chance of them hanging in there and getting on the ballot next time. But I still think they are doomed.
Democracy Watch missed the cut by a razor thin margin getting 2,46%, so maybe that will increase the likelyhood of a Dawn/DW fusion, but I doubt it, too much bad blood between them.

EDIT: Since the object is to build a majority coalition between parties with very different agendas and goals the Icelandic government formation process often takes a long time. Before 1991 it was not uncommon to use a couple of months, but nowadays its generally done within a forthnight.

[politicus]

Well, first of all it is still far from certain that Iceland will get a "Conservative" government. A Social Liberal-Social Democratic coalition is still a possibility. It would in many ways make a lot more sense.

But if Iceland do get a Conservative-Social Liberal government I think its pretty certain that an IP-PP coalition will not get reelected.

They have made numerous promises they cant deliver on. A well-known political journalist in Iceland gave them 100 days before the crowds will start to demonstrate outside the Althing (as they did after the crash) and demand their resignation. Dunno if that's an exaggeration, but its not totally unlikely.

Primary campaign promises:
 
IP: Better welfare with lower taxes - because lower taxes will create a much wealthier society, so the government will be able to make everything so much better = classic populism with very high BS factor.

PP: Saving homeowners by cutting their mortgages by 20% paid for by forcing foreign creditors to fork out the cash if they don't want their assets in Iceland de facto confiscated by heavy taxation.
Economists doubt this plan will generate the necessary money, or that the creditors will accept the blackmail. Furthermore they say it will create massive inflation.

So big disappointment either way, and also big disappointment if the two parties decide to drop both plans because they each hate each others "magic recipe".

Besides IP is in no fit state to govern. Its a house divided with a manipulative former PM still called "chairman" by the party right wing and controlling one of the country's biggest media who is trying to rule the party by proxy. Add an extremely weak leader with a deputy that's much more popular, but cant decide whether she wants to topple him and a europhile moderate wing that would rather work with the SDA than engage in all this populist nonsense, a spoonfull of crazy libertarians and Christian Right types and a plethora of clientilistic networks all wanting to get a piece of the action they have been denied for four years. Then you got a recipe for disaster.  

Then there is the problem that the two partys have an equal number of seats in parliament, so who gets to be top dog?
PP sees their electoral victory as the big chance to become the dominant party in Iceland and wants to head the government, while IP thinks its their God given right to rule Iceland and wont accept that their leader plays second fiddle, even if its a guy like Benediktsson that nobody really respects.
 
So no matter who gets to be Prime Minister the other party will try to undermine him almost from day one.

I think its a safe bet that such a government wont get reelected, but I also think the PP leadership knows this and may hesitate to chose this combination if they can get the centrist parties to compromise on EU and go along with the "extortion scheme", perhas in a watered down version. And an SDA leadership under severe pressure from internal critics may just be desperate enough to do this.

[politicus]

The latest development is that prominent IPers have been suggesting the party start talks with SDA and BF to "rid the nation of the debt reduction botched Progressive Party" as one of them put it.

IP considers SDGs decision to talk to the parties in alphabetical order a grave insult (IP has D, so they are only third - after SDA and the Pirates) and apparantly the talks today went badly.

This may all be tactical stuff, but if both the big centre-right parties start courting SDA, this might but them in a strong position and end in a more leftist government program than expected.

Still IP would have to drop their flat tax and accept finishing the EU talks to have any chance with SDA and their right wing would hate that.

EDIT: Birgitta Jonsdottir from the Pirates has said that she thinks its going to be a minority government with PP and possibly "some minor parties" (PP - BF?) and that this would "be good for parliamentary cooperation" marking a clear break with "the old Iceland".

A PP minority government supported by the centre-left would be a sensible option given how hard it will be to form a functioning coalition.

EDIT:EDIT: Apparently Jonsdottir wants the minority government to be temporary while SDG tries to execute his "extortion-scheme" against the foreign creditors. Afterwards there should be a new government formation.